


now I breathe flames each time I talk

by liesmyth



Category: The Inheritance Cycle - Christopher Paolini
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dead Parent Survives To Raise Child, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:02:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26179930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liesmyth/pseuds/liesmyth
Summary: As Morzan’s Black Hand, Selena had killed many people. She can kill one King.
Relationships: Murtagh Morzansson & Selena, Murtagh Morzansson/Nasuada
Comments: 11
Kudos: 50
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020





	now I breathe flames each time I talk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amitye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amitye/gifts).



Whenever the Lady Selena was home from the capital, which was often, she took her son out for long rides all around the estate. She’d dress in simple riding clothes, her guardsmen following a distance, and pointed to Murtagh all the fields and hills and towns that were part of his inheritance.

She taught him things, too: how he could feel the birds and the animals and the blades of grass all around him, the warm life force that was all over the world. What to do if there was a kidnapping attempt, and how to look after himself if he ever was separated from Tornac and Joel. To go for the eyes without hesitation, and how to be wise.

Once, when Murtagh was eight years old, his mother taught him about being a leader.

The greatest leaders, she said, were those who inspired loyalty in their followers. If one couldn’t command loyalty then respect would do, but it was a poor leader indeed one who only ruled through fear. 

“Are you loyal to the king, then?” Murtagh said, frowning up to stare into his mother’s eyes.

“I respect him immensely,” Selena said, without any hesitation, and she meant it even then. “He tore down an Order that lasted for centuries and took over the greatest kingdom of the known world. That’s beyond impressive. And – our family owes him a lot, always remember that. He gave your father many privileges.”

“Father was scary.” It wasn’t something Murtagh let himself admit often, not even to himself, but Mother was home for the week and it was their special time together, and Joel was far away enough that he wouldn’t hear. “He made me afraid.” He said it softly against the howling of the wind, and Selena’s arms tightened around him. She kissed his hair, caressed down his neck where his scar began.

“You’re going to be a better man than your father ever was. You’re going – honey.” Her lips were dry and warm against his forehead, placing light kisses and whispering soothingly the way she always did when Murtagh brought up Father. It would take him years to realise it was guilt. “I only want the best for you, you know that. I love you so much.”

When the Lady Selena was home, sometimes she would visit her husband’s grave. But she never took her son with her.

Murtagh had been born the heir to a blood-stained legacy, a blood-red sword, and the second greatest estate in all the Empire. The sword had been lost when his father had died and his mother handled most of the daily running of the estate, but just the sight of Murtagh’s face was enough to remind of Morzan in the minds of all those who had known him, from the weapons master at Urû'baen to the governor of Dras-Leona. It didn’t matter when he was at home, under the watchful eyes of Tornac and his wolfhound Leanna and Larissa the cook, but every time he was in the capital every eye was on him, and often Murtagh wished he looked more like his mother. The King, too, had noticed, and on the eve of Murtagh’s fourteenth birthday, an embossed invitation arrived, written in golden ink with a seal of black wax.

Selena wasn’t in Urû'baen. She’d gone east to meet with the burgomasters of a handful of small towns in Morzan’s domain – Murtagh’s domain, now – on the matter of a new road. From the time she’d married Morzan the estate had flourished; the harvests were plenty and the towns were doing well, growing larger as many of the folk moved in, not minding overly much that they were paying their taxes to a traitor’s widow.

Murtagh, the traitor’s son, didn’t know what to do. His mother had always gone to great lengths to keep him away from the games of the court, insisting he was too young for political intrigue, but she wasn’t there to give advice, and he couldn’t disobey the King. He rode into Urû'baen and went to dinner with the King and hunting with the court, and on the morning of his fourteenth birthday he was brought to a damp dungeon guarded by six stern-faced warlocks and emerged from it with a dragon hatchling.

“He’s too young,” Selena said, hands shaking and voice trembling with nerves. She smoothed her palms against the soft velvet of her skirt, keeping her back straight and her chin up.

The King didn’t look moved in the least.

“I was younger. So was Morzan,” he reminded her. “Ten years old, that was the custom for human children. And they sent the young ones to train with the elves straight away, most hardly ever saw their families again. You should count yourself lucky, my lady.”

He didn’t need threats. He didn’t need guards either, trusting the oaths she’d made under a name that no longer was her own, so often he emptied the room when she asked for an audience. Part of Selena wondered if Galbatorix enjoyed their talks – even as far gone as he was there was a part of him that missed the Forsworn and, these days, she was the closest thing he had to them. There was no telling what he’d try to shape Murtagh into, if she let him.

She wasn’t going to. She curtsied and took her leave, and the entire way back to her quarters she felt as if she were walking in a dream.

Murtagh had been given rooms in the palace, well away from the rest of the court and far too big for a boy of fourteen. The hatchling was with him, small and red and always hungry, oddly silent. Selena watched as her soon feed the thing with his own hands, and thought about fire.

“It’s so tiny,” she said, marvelled. “I could kill it for you if you want.”

“What?” Murtagh said, incredulous. “Mother– no!” The small dragon hissed from his spot near the fireplace, too small to spit fire yet, agitated by the rush of sudden panic in his rider’s mind.

“Without a dragon, you can’t be a rider. You could be a warlock, still able to defend yourself, not as valuable– Murtagh, the King will never let you go now. Has he looked into your mind yet? Has he–”

Murtagh looked to the floor, shoulders sagging. “It hurt.”

He didn’t need to explain. Selena nodded, far more calmly then she felt. “I’m not– I won’t harm the dragon. Not if you don’t want me to. The last thing I want is to see you hurt.”

“Him,” Murtagh said. “Him, not _it_. He said so.”

“Alright.” Selena looked at the dragon with new eyes. She remembered Morzan’s large red beast, how it had lost itself after the fall of the Riders. How it had pained Morzan until the day he died.

“He’ll need a name,” she said. The dragon would live. The King though – the King was another matter entirely.

As Morzan’s Black Hand, Selena had killed many people. She’d fallen into the life of an assassin almost by chance – it was miles from what her family had wanted for her, back in sleepy Carvahall, and it certainly wasn’t what she’d expected when she’d left home to follow the handsome foreign lord who’d looked into her eyes and said she was clever. Selena had been nineteen; she had been a bright, lonely child who’d grown into a pretty young woman who liked to keep her own company. Many men about town had told her she was beautiful, as if that was all they needed to say to get her attention. No one had ever called her clever before.

That had been twenty years ago. Selena was a rich woman now, with fur-lined clothes and pearls and two lovers in the capital who hardly mattered in the grand scheme of things. She had a son he saw most days and one she didn’t think about at all, for both their sakes, and she sent money to her brother every year but never wrote. She hadn’t killed anyone personally in a decade but, for Murtagh, she would.

Once upon a time, the charge of Galbatorix’s security detail had been her job. She knew all the secret passageways, all the members of the network of spies that bore her name. All of them were under strict orders to protect the King even if it meant their life, Selena included – but those oaths no longer held. She didn’t know the intricacies of the layers of spell that generations of warlocks had placed on their sovereign, but what she knew would be enough.

Back when she’d made her living killing Morzan’s enemies, Selena’s speciality had been poisons. She had made a study out of it, travelled far and wide; she knew all the poisonous mushrooms of the steppe of Gil’ead and spent six months hiding out in Surda to study under famed master herbalist Domar, who hated the Empire and never learned of her true identity. A half-elf witch in Teirm had once read Selena’s future and winced at what she saw, but she’d still sold her herbs that couldn’t be found anywhere outside of the Du Weldenvarden. Selena had used to make her own draughts, and some of them had no known antidote. 

Selena didn’t know all of Galbatorix’s spells, but she didn’t need to. She knew which of the Black Hands had spelled him against unknown poisons – three different magic users, who all died in the same night. She knew which of the cooks made the King’s dinner, and which of the guards were charged with tasting it.

It was enough.

Selena had never been loyal to Galbatorix, not truly, and she did respect him, but not as much as she feared him. The heart of the matter was simple: nobody one liked an immortal ruler, something that held just as true under Galbatorix’s reign as it had when he’d rallied his Forsworn against him riding the wave of humankind’s resentment against the Riders. When the King fell ill, as soon as it became clear he would not recover, his Empire began to crumble.

Nobles of high standing found refuge in their estates, ambitious courtiers with nothing to lose began swarming the King’s deathbed with the solicitousness of vultures. Galbatorix’s warlocks, too, split between those who remained in Urû'baen and those who disappeared into the night, fleeing as far away as their oaths would let them. Selena kept herself to the relative safety of the great castle north of Gil’ead where Murtagh had been born; her son joined her as soon as he could, and while they never spoke about the suspicious timing of Galbatorix’s death, it was clear that he suspected. She was saddened to notice the newfound wariness in Murtagh’s pensive frown when he thought she wasn’t looking, narrow-eyed and pensive, but perhaps it was always meant to happen.

As the King lay dying, his great black dragon had been sighted flying away from the capital, striking fear in the hearts of anyone close enough to hear his shrieks. Dragons often died with their Riders, but Shruikan hadn’t, and perhaps the best they could hope for was that he’d flown away from Alagaësia for good. The only known dragon left in the continent was the young hatchling who was bonded to Selena’s son, and that even more than Morzan’s name meant the attentions of whichever noble fancied themselves Galbatorix’s successor. Selena went about her business in the estate and watched on as Murtagh practised his magic and played with his dragon like the boy he should still have been, and the whole time she thought that once the civil war brewing in the horizon finally began they would be called to make a choice, for better or worse.

When the request for an alliance arrived, it was from the last person Selena would have expected to see. Ajihad, leader of the Varden, had keen brown eyes and a thick scar that ran down the side of his neck, and he looked at Selena as if weighing her against whatever ideal of her he held in his mind.

“Do you travel to the Empire often?” she asked calmly, as if his piercing stare didn’t bother her at all. “In times like these, you’d make an excellent scapegoat. If the governor of Dras-Leona or the Duke of Saltlight caught the head of the Varden within their lands, it would put them that much closer to the throne and you on the gallows.”

“You were married to Morzan, and your son has a dragon,” Ajihad replied just as bluntly. “Whoever hopes to win this war will need you at their side. They’ll even ignore the strange circumstances of the King’s death…” And there he smiled, just slightly; Selena’s face gave away nothing. “…because they’d need you on their side that badly.”

“And yet you’re the one who came to me first. Do you think I’d join the Varden? I think your people would riot first.”

“Your son looks very much like his father.”

“He’s a very handsome boy,” Selena said curtly. “What of it?”

“A few months ago, our spies carried news that the new Rider was a young nobleman of the Empire, and there were no doubts about his loyalty to Galbatorix from the start. But, curiously enough, he hasn’t involved himself in any of the skirmishes that took place since the King fell ill. And I’ve heard about you from – an old acquaintance. He said there was more to you than it meets the eye.”

 _An old acquaintance_ – but no, it didn’t matter. Selena steadied herself. “What do you want? I don’t believe you snuck this far into the Empire, risking your safety, just to talk to me about my son. He’s too young for you to concern yourself with him. Something Galbatorix refused to understand.”

“I came to ask you the same thing,” Ajihad said. “You say you mean to stay away from the conflicts, but there must be something you wish to see. The way you believe things ought to be.”

Selena, the youngest child of a farmer in the Spine, had taught herself to read on treatises of law and politics owned by Morzan’s seneschal. She’d learned about history and how to run a fiefdom and spent long days in thoughts about the future of the Empire, back when she had been young and foolish and thought she and Morzan might have a good life together.

“A council,” she answered without hesitation. “Where the king or the queen are chosen between the members and their power held in check by the others–”

“The way we do it among the Varden, you mean?”

“Perhaps,” Selena said. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m curious to know what you will say to the first warlord who comes knocking on your doors.”

“I’ll tell him to get lost.” She smiled. “But you’re not a warlord, aren’t you? Not since you joined the Varden. And you have your answer. What else?”

“You were right,” Ajihad admitted. “I want to talk to your son.”

“No.” Selena crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s young and–”

“Let me finish, my lady. I meant that the boy has much of his father in his looks, but very few among the Varden have met Morzan and survived. You can train him in magic and your men can train him in swordfighting, but the libraries in Tronjheim hold all the knowledge about the riders that Galbatorix sought to destroy.”

“I’m sure Murtagh will enjoy your libraries when he’s taken hostage by your people,” Selena said dryly, but part of her believed that Ajihad meant well.

“You’ll have to talk to him,” she allowed.

Murtagh trusted Ajihad just as much as Selena did – in moderation, despite Ajihad’s best intentions. Murtagh didn’t go to visit the Varden that winter, as the Empire splintered and the Lady of Tüdosten waged a border skirmish against Surda, and yet the fighting never turned to open war. He didn’t leave the year after, either, when Saltlight and Ninor went to battle sending an inflow of refuges in their lands. The Varden remained hidden under Tronjheim even with no Galbatorix left to fight, waiting for something still; and nearly three years after Ajihad’s visit, when Murtagh was almost eighteen, he told Selena he would be leaving the empire. There was so much he and Thorn didn’t know about being a Rider with a living dragon, so much that Selena couldn’t teach him. She wondered if Thorn had been the one who persuaded her son – they were still uneasy in each other’s presence, the Black Hand and her son’s dragon, and she knew that Murtagh still held hope that it would change one day.

“I will miss you so much,” she whispered, hugging him. He was taller than her these days, and it always brought a smile to her lips when she looked upon the young man her son had grown into. “Stay safe and look after yourself–”

“And don’t follow the elves into their forest?” He said teasingly. “Don’t worry, mother, I doubt they will care to invite me there.”

And then he was off, flying on the back of his dragon, and the way they looked as Thorn took off reminded her of Morzan so much that her chest tightened. She went back inside and watched from a window as Thorn disappeared into the horizon, scared and happy and proud; then she changed into a more comfortable dress and went back to looking over the estate’s accounts.

Murtagh’s first letter arrived about two months later. It wasn’t easy to post a missive from the far corners of the Empire, even more so as he went beyond its confines, but the Varden still had an extensive spy network, and as the months went by Selena gathered a small pile of letters from her son, all written in a familiar hand and even more familiar code.

He told her about the towns he’d visited in his travels and the joys of learning a new trick flying in Thorn’s saddle. Later on, he began to write about life in Tronjheim and the dwarves who lived side by side with the Varden, and all he had discovered. Ajihad kept his word and kept the truth of Murtagh’s origins between himself and the Dwarven King – and his daughter, Murtagh wrote, whom Ajihad had assigned to him as an escort around Tronjheim, just in case he wandered where he shouldn’t. Murtagh spoke of her in enthusiastic tones, with the delight of a boy who never had many friends and, later, with the excitement of a young man swept up by his first love. One lengthy letter he sent about six months into his permanence with the Varden was nothing but a detailed account of a discussion he’d had with Nasuada on dwarven history, and then at the end he suggested that maybe she might want to come along when he returned north for a visit. Selena read it all with a smile on her lips, shaking her head to herself. She smoothed down the crinkled corners of the parchment as if she were caressing her son’s hair, feeling unbelievably relieved and happy and overwhelmed all at once.

Then she began to compose a reply, asking her son to come home.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a wildly divergent AU, but Thorn is still named Thorn because fourteen-year-old Murtagh probably thought it sounded really badass. Murtagh and Eragon’s canonical age difference means that Eragon is still chilling in Carvahall with his mother’s family, including Aunt Marian who is definitely still alive. Also: it didn’t make it into the story, but the council Ajihad and Selena talked about eventually comes into being, and Nasuada is sent as a representative of the Varden.


End file.
